Rohall 3e ppt ch05

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Social PsychologySociological Perspectives

THIRD EDITIONRohall, Milkie, Lucas

Chapter Five

Self and Identity


The Sociology of Self and Identity

• Sociologists study the self, self-concept, and identities rather than the concept of personality

• The self is a process in which we construct a sense of who we are through interaction with others

• The self process at a given point in time is the self-concept

• Scholars examining the self-concept focus on self-identities, the kind of person we see ourselves as and self-evaluations, the judgments we make of ourselves


SI: The Self as a Process

• From the symbolic interactionist perspective, the self is a process, just like the construction of any social reality

• We give meaning to our self in many different ways during our interactions with others by asking the questions like:– Are we good or bad people? – How well do we do the tasks we set out to do?


SI: The I and the Me

• We use symbols and language to communicate with other people, but we also use language to think internally, a process Herbert Blumer calls self-indication

• According to George Herbert Mead, a large part of our internal dialogue occurs as interplay between the Me, the organized set of attitudes toward the self, and the I, our active self


SI: Self-narratives

• Self-narratives refers to how individuals construct the meaning of their identities using personal stories

• Self-narratives are not simply a list of stories that occur in our lives, but the reformatting of multiple stories to make a single, coherent sense of the self over time


SI: Identity and Identity Theory

• Identity refers to our internalized, stable sense of who we are, including: – Role identities– Social categories– Personal characteristics

• Identity theory examines the ways society shapes how we view ourselves, and how those views, or identities, affect our behavior


SI: Principles of Identity Theory

• Identity theory is rooted in five basic principles:

– Behavior is based on an already classified world– Positions in society are among the things classified – People develop their identities based on their

positions in society – We incorporate our social positions into our sense of

identity– Social behavior is derived from the shaping and

modifying of the expectations of our positions


SI: Identity Control Theory

• Identity control theory proposes that self-consistency is as or more important to people than maintaining a positive self-image

• Individuals maintain or change their identities over time depending on access to: – Affective commitment - our personal desire to maintain

an identity– Interactional commitment - maintaining relationships

with people in different social spheres related to our identities

• Individuals with higher levels of commitment are less likely to change their identities over time


SI: Emotions and Identities

• Affect-control theory states that emotions serve as signals about how well we are producing our identities

• Congruence between our self-perceived identity and the information we receive about ourselves generally produces positive emotions

• Negative emotions often signal that something is not right about a situation.


SI: Affect Control Theory• Affect control theory includes an analysis of the role of

sentiments in interactions more generally. It is based on three basic principles (Heise 2002):

– Individuals create events to confirm the sentiments that they have about themselves and others in the current situation.

– If events don’t work to maintain sentiments, then individuals re-identify themselves and others.

– In the process of building events to confirm sentiments, individuals perform the social roles that are fundamental to society.


SI: Dramaturgical Sociology

• From an interactionist perspective, individuals have the ability to choose how to act, above and beyond their inclinations

• The study of how we present ourselves, playing roles and managing impressions during interactions with other people, is called dramaturgical sociology

• Dramaturgical sociology is most closely associated with Erving Goffman (1922–1982)


SI: Goffman and Impression Management

• Erving Goffman believed that we use information from others’ presentations to help establish expectations of our behavior and that of the people around us

• Impression management refers to the ways individuals seek to control the impressions they convey to other people

• There are impressions given and impressions given off—the impression you believe that you are giving and the impression the other person has of you


SI: Motivations Behind Impression Management

• Goffman argued that we are driven to maintain positive impressions, probably because outcomes of interactions serve as a source of self-esteem

• Supporting others’ impressions is important because we may need support in our own impression management efforts later in the interaction


SI: Regions of Impression Formation

• There are two regions of impression formation that affect how we interact with people: – The front stage, the place where we present

ourselves to others– the backstage, the region where we relax our

impression management efforts and we may practice our performances

• People regularly move in and out of these regions


SI: Self-Presentations

• Our presentations of self do make a difference in the world. People evaluate other people based on their front-stage performances.

• If you know how people behave in different societal roles, you can adopt similar mannerisms to reproduce those impressions.

• Like any other skill, developing good impression management skills takes three things: practice, practice, practice!


SI: The Situated Self

• In the interactionist framework, the self changes as quickly as our social environments

• Social forces like globalization and technological advances lead to rapid changes in our social worlds

• Scholars to argue that we have a much more situated self, a temporally-based sense of who we are, associated with a lack of clear sense of identity


SSP: The Self and Social Structure

• Scholars from the social structure and personality perspective focus on how our social positions and relationships affect our self-evaluations

• Researchers from this tradition often study the relationship between social positions and the self-concept in the form of self-esteem, mastery, and mattering


SSP: Evaluative Dimensions of the Self

• Three of the most studied forms of the self-concept include self-esteem, mastery, and mattering:– Self-esteem is the positive or negative evaluation of

our self as an object– Mastery refers to our perceptions of our ability to

control our environments – Mattering refers to our sense that we are important to

other people in the world


SSP: Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem is considered a foundational aspect of the self; it answers the question: How good am I?

• There are four sources of the self-concept:– Social comparisons – Reflected appraisals – Psychological centrality – Self-perceptions

• Research generally shows that reflected appraisals are most central to our self-esteem


SSP: Mastery

• Mastery addresses the question: How powerful am I to do the things I would like to do?

• Personal accomplishments are the most important source of efficacy in adulthood

• Several studies show that higher levels of mastery is associated with fewer mental and physical health problems


SSP: Mattering

• Mattering answers the question: How much do I matter to others?

• Morris Rosenberg argued that we have an intrinsic need to feel that we are needed by the people around us

• Research show that mattering is positively related to self-esteem and negatively related to depression and anxiety


SSP: Ethnicity and Self-Identities

• Ethnicity not only affects self-evaluations, it is an integral to self-identities

• Joanne Nagel (1995), for instance, found that there were very large increase in the number of residents identifying themselves as “American Indian” in the 1970s and 1980s yet there had been no increase in birthrates

• She found that societal changes made being of American Indian ancestry less stigmatized and more acceptable, leading more people to accept that identity


SSP: Measuring the Self-Concept

• SSP scholars rely on a number of common methods to assess the self-concept

• Manford Kuhn’s Twenty Statements Test (TST) is a popular way to measure the self

• Morris Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale is a popular method of assessing self-esteem


SSP:The Twenty Statements Test

• Responses to the TST are generally divided into four categories:

– Physical self – refers to physical characteristics such as hair color or height.

– Social self – refers to roles and statuses, such as student, daughter, or son and gender.

– Reflective self – refers to our feelings and traits such as being shy or kindhearted.

– Oceanic self – the dimensions of the self that do not easily fit into the first three categories, usually referring to some holistic sense of self.


GP: Identity and Group Processes

• Groups serve as a way to establish and maintain our sense of self

• Groups can also serve to give you an identity that is a collective one


GP: Social Identity Theory

• Social identity theory argues that we carry self-definitions that match all the categories to which we belong

• In the theory, these self-definitions are called social identities

• Originally developed in psychology, social identity theory proposes that our social identities describe to us who we are, provide us with information about how to behave, and tell us how we should evaluate other people


GP: Social Identity Theoryand Interactions

• Social identity theory says that we will perceive ourselves according to that identity and behave in ways that are stereotypical of that identity

• We also engage in a process of categorization, the process through which we draw sharp dividing lines between group membership categories and assign people to relevant categories

• Once categorized, we engage in self-enhancement, the process through which we make comparisons that favor our group


Chapter 5: Bringing It All Together

• The three perspectives in social psychology approach the study of self and identity in different ways

• Interactionists emphasize how our sense of self is actively constructed

• Social structure and personality scholars focus on the ways that our social positions impact the self-concept

• Group processes work emphasizes the important role of group memberships in our sense of identity

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